


Like the Deserts Miss the Rain

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Casablanca (1942)
Genre: F/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 17:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20049502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: The years pass - but Ilsa can't stop looking for him.





	Like the Deserts Miss the Rain

Her plane is late getting there; doesn’t arrive at Charles De Gaulle until 3pm, and that being the busiest time of day the gates are clogged. 

Ilsa sighs; hears passengers around her grumbling as they realize there will be an interminable wait for a bus to carry them from the very, very far end of the complex all the way back to the terminal. 

“Relax, my dear,” a woman in front of her tells her husband. “It’s hardly the end of the world.”

She chuckles. The couple is about her age. They all know what the end of the world may feel like. 

It’s fifty yards from the steps of the plane to the shuttle bus; a bright, blue sky day, blazingly hot for Paris, not a cloud in the sky nor any hint of mist in the air - but still…

The sound of heels clicking on tarmac, mens’ shoes scuffing the cement….it brings it all back. 

She shivers in the heat. 

That particular airfield, that night? It’s decades in her past. 

It’s also yesterday. It’ll always feel like yesterday.

-*-

“Bienvenue, Madame Laslow, welcome back,” the manager of the hotel meets her with a bow he moment she walks into the ballroom. “You will want to review the setup for the lecture first, yes?”

“Thank you. And then the room for the panel discussion, monsieur. I have some changes for you. We have more participants than we’d hoped for….”

“Yes, this way, my staff will join us in a moment….”

It’s never easy work - raising money to protect refugees in a world so weary of war, eager to forget it and enjoy the boom that followed. Victor raises the big cash in New York and L.A. She keeps the message in front of as many people as they can; lobbying at the U.N., conferences and fundraisers in Europe, Asia. 

It’s harder for him to travel now, so she does it alone more often than not. 

“Is it …difficult for you?” He asks her on the phone that night. “Being in Paris without me?”

There’s a persistent click in the phone line, a hesitation in his voice. 

“What would you have me say?” she asks gently, and thankfully he leaves it at that. “I’ve been thinking… I believe I’ll stay a few days after the conference and have some dresses made. Better to stay than have them shipped, and it’s so difficult to find a good seamstress at home, or decent fabric…all that awful Rayon in the stores…Dacron. What in the hell is it these days, that people are happy to wear chemicals against their skin?”  
“Of course,” he says, and sounds truly good with it. “Be well, my darling. I love you.”

“Victor…thank you.”

“For what?”

“Being my rock. And so patient with me.”

She knows what he wants to hear from her, but she’s never said it to him, not once.

She doesn’t like to lie.

-*-

The conference goes even better than any of them had hoped. The fittings are done. And so, the next morning she makes a phone call: Pulling again at the thread she’d followed on her last trip here, looking for the woman who has heard stories about the Free French garrison in the Belgian Congo — the work they did both there and in Ethiopia. 

The woman who may know which of them made it back to France and who did not.

-*-

“Your bag, madame…”

“Merci, oh…my…wait...” The porter barely has time to hand it up the stairs to her; she almost drops it as the train begins to inch out of the station and they both chuckle as she pulls it to safety and rights herself. “….I’m good. Thank you so much.”

It only hits her then; that it’s the same platform, the same train where they were supposed to meet. 

For a second she can almost see him: Rick at her feet instead of the porter, him hopping onto the step to join her with his easy, dancer's gait; smiling down with that sparkle in his eyes, leaning in for a quick kiss.

“What would you say to him,” a good friend had asked her once - the only friend she’d ever told he entire tale to. “If you do manage to find him alive, somewhere - what would you even say to him?”

“I would tell him… that I’ve grown up; figured out how to make my own decisions, finally, including the difficult ones. And that I forgive him.”

“Forgive him? For saving your lives?”

“For not saving ‘us’ at the same time.”

“From the stories you’ve told me… it seems terribly unlikely he could have accomplished both.”

“Couldn’t he have?” she’d asked. “If he really wanted to?” 

-*- 

The ride to Marseilles will take hours. Ilsa settles in, and watches the scenery until the motion of the train lulls her into a doze.

One of these years, it will be time to stop looking. Either that, or the search will bring an answer she doesn’t want to hear. 

So many disappeared in the war and were never heard from again. But she knows it would also be like him to slip away - to survive, and find another place in need of a warm and happy cafe. It was entirely him to put the past into a neat little box, closing the lid…..but it’s not her. 

Someday, it’ll be time to stop looking. 

Not yet.


End file.
